


Blocking a Riot

by spuffyduds



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2906051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria at work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blocking a Riot

Maria’s a little surprised when Geoffrey plops down in the seat next to her after rehearsal. Usually she has the theater to herself for a while. It’s nice, quiet; she can write up her rehearsal report. Well, reports. The public one and the one that’s just _venting_.

“Why,” he says, “did I think directing light comedy would be _simple_?”

She shrugs, since it’s clearly a rhetorical question. It’s theater; theater doesn’t do simple.

“‘Don’t Drink the Water. Funny, silly, no angst to eat the actors’ brains,” he says. “Or mine. And then I find myself in the oxymoronic position of blocking a scene which is literally described in the script as ‘bedlam.’ So, creating rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty?!?”

“I worked a production of ‘Endgame’ once,” Maria says, giving up on finishing her notes before she goes home. “I thought, this is going to be the simplest thing ever, right? Two people in trash cans. And then the director decided that clearly they needed to be trying to have sex with each other the whole time. Like, through the trash cans.” 

She clunks her head against the back of the seat and rolls her eyes at the memory. “To ‘illustrate the impossibility of real human contact.”

“Ah, yes, because Beckett wasn’t getting _that_ across otherwise,” Geoffrey says. “Wasn’t that a bit...clangy?”

“Early rehearsals you couldn’t hear half their lines over the clanging. Plus they kept falling over and rolling offstage into the front row.”

Geoffrey curls up to put his feet on the seatback in front of him, giggling.

“If I could work up a set of cues for simulated trash-can-fucking while keeping the cans quiet and _without_ killing the front row patrons, you can block a riot,” she says, because Reassuring the Director is high on the list of the stage manager’s Necessary but Unmentioned Jobs.

“You are,” he says, “very oddly cheering. Why do you do two rehearsal reports?”

She panics, quietly. If there’s one thing she has plenty of job experience with, it’s panicking quietly. She’s really quite startled, though--she’d thought she was being pretty subtle. Not like she’s using two notebooks or anything, just flipping quietly to the back of the notebook to put down her personal notes.

“Um,” she says. “Well. One of them is...official.”

“And the other one?”

Shit, there’s really no way out of this. “It’s for...venting.”

He leans over and flips to the back of her notebook.

“Hey!” she says, uselessly; he’s already running a finger down her notes.

“‘Axel could not hit his fucking marks with a fucking hammer,’” he reads. “Harsh, but accurate. Watered down in the official version?”

“Yeah,” she says, but doesn’t relax, because the next note is…

“‘Ellen,” his brow furrows,”’...deeves?”

“Um. Present tense of ‘to diva.’” She doesn’t _think_ he’s going to fire her--she was a founding member of the revived Theater Sans Argent--but it’s still a relief when he snorts and says, “Inarguable.”

“I can...not do the second set of notes, if that’s gonna bug you.”

“Far be it from me to deny anyone the chance to vent,” he says, standing, and tips his head toward the door. “Pub?”

“Sure,” she says.

“I am definitely using ‘deeves’ at some point.”

“Don’t reveal your source,” she says, and follows him out the door.

\--end--


End file.
